Halfbrick’s Fruit Ninja has surprisingly, up until recently, only largely been contained to the single version of the game, while Angry Birds explores various holidays and even Cut the Rope has launched a second SKU. That is until now, with Fruit Ninja: Puss in Boots. The game comes with 2 modes, Desperado and Bandito. Desperado is the same classic Fruit Ninja mode: fruit is tossed up in the air, and the player must slash the fruits without letting any of them hit the ground, and without hitting any of the bombs that are tossed up as well. The Bandito mode is the new mode, and the reason to come check this out. It’s a collection of set pieces with the same rules, where certain numbers of fruit must be sliced before time runs out. Players get 3 lives, and must make their way through 13 levels without running out.

Bandito mode successfully accomplishes what Angry Birds Rio and Cut the Rope Experiments could not – actually change up the original gameplay in a meaningful way. The new challenges are fun, different, and they provide a great justification for playing this game beyond “oh look, more levels. Hooray.” that the aforementioned franchises offered. It’s still Fruit Ninja, but it’s different enough to justify checking out.

The complaints come largely from technical issues. The game crashed frequently on my Samsung Captivate – it works a lot better on the Motorola Xoom, though there are some framerate issues when not running in “Zoom to fill screen” mode. As well, that achievement pop up is rather large and does get in the way of the Desperado mode. As well, the stretching from the iPhone and iPod touch’s 3:2 display ratio is still mildly noticeable; I understand compromises have to be made for wider screens, but I much prefer letterboxing to stretching.

Fruit Ninja: Puss in Boots is a great expansion for the franchise; it expands on the original gameplay, uses its license in a non-obtrusive way, and is a great use of 99 cents for fans of the game.

Fruit Ninja: Puss in Boots has finally made its way to the Amazon Appstore. Announced back in November, the game’s release was summarily delayed for unknown reasons. However, the game has finally been released on the Amazon Appstore, and is free today, December 27th. This is the second major title to go free on the Amazon Appstore, after yesterday’s free full version of Where’s My Water. The game features two game modes: the classic Fruit Ninja mode where players try not to let fruit fall off the screen, or to slice bombs. As well, there’s a new Bandito mode where players try to complete missions without hitting any bombs. It’s an interesting new twist on the traditional Fruit Ninja gameplay. The delay could be in part as a campaign for new Kindle Fire owners who just got one from Santa; Amazon may be wanting people to check out the Amazon Appstore either on the Kindle Fire on on many other devices to help draw more eyes to the store. The game is available now on the Amazon Appstore; no word on when or if it will be on the Amazon Market.